FBI, DEA orchestrate massive raid of suspected operations

Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI agents joined state and local agencies in a massive, coordinated raid of more than a dozen suspected illegal marijuana growing operations across the Denver metro area Thursday morning, federal officials said.

Drug investigators began serving judicial warrants to suspected drug trafficking locations following a lengthy investigation, said Deanne Rueter, spokeswoman for the DEA in Denver.

“There’s quite a few in Thornton,” Rueter said. “A lot of cities are involved.”

Law enforcement agencies across the metro area are involved, including Denver, Aurora, Thornton, Commerce City and Broomfield police and sheriff’s investigators from Jefferson and Arapahoe counties.

Rueter declined to give specific details about the total number of homes and businesses that are being raided. She said she does not know whether law enforcement officers are making drug-related arrests, but that the situation is an ongoing criminal investigation.

Just before 11 a.m., agencies were still going house-to-house serving warrants to suspected locations across the metro region.

Television footage showed pot plants laid out in the drive- way of a home in a middle-class subdivision in the suburb of Thornton. Agents in hazmat suits were walking around the front of the home as three people sat handcuffed on the curb. A group of neighbors, some out with their dogs, gathered on a corner to watch.

In June 2017, a massive bust resulted in a Denver grand jury indicting 62 people accused in a marijuana trafficking organization that reaped millions of dollars by illegally growing pot and selling it out of state for four years.

At the time, the bust was the largest in Colorado since recreational marijuana was legalized in 2014.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.